Orange
by T'Vau
Summary: Janeway has to babysit a terrifying and thirsty Miral.


**I love orange drink. Not orange juice, or orange soda. Those have some minute trace of nutritional value.**

**No. Orange drink is a whole different ballgame.**

**Next to coffee, it's the greatest liquid ever to grace my tongue. Well...there is one other liquid.**

**But that's dirty. Isn't it?**

**(and it hasn't yet graced my tongue. But I'm hoping, you know?)**

**REVIEW, please.**

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Janeway sat stiffly behind her desk, her fingers gripping the composite surface so tightly that all of the colour fled from her knuckles. Her jaw was clenched and her eyes were wide and alert, her eyes steadily trained on the fearsome beast before her.

The child slowed the momentum of the crayon scraping across the paper and looked up, her brooding gaze keenly examining the Captain, and making Janeway feel as though a litter of hungry little badgers were inhabiting her gut.

"Thirsty." It wasn't a question, nor was it a statement. It was a demand.

Janeway flinched.

"What do you want to drink?"

"Orange."

The girl had developed an unnerving habit of short, quick bursts of speech that always made Janeway want to strangle the teeny Klingon. But she knew such fantasies were entirely fictional because more than likely the Captain, who had stood up and essentially told the Borg Queen to go fuck herself, would cower in fear and pee a little if faced with an enraged Miral Paris-Torres.

"Orange juice?"

The child screwed up her face.

Janeway sighed and moved to the replicator, making sure to position herself so that her back was not facing the toddler at any moment. She watched as a glass filled with the citrus liquid materialized in a haze of blue static, and carried it carefully to the daunting little girl.

Miral promptly grabbed the glass from Janeway and drank it in one mighty gulp, quite the feat for one of such a small stature. She looked down at the empty glass and looked very, very sad for a moment, before looking up at the Captain.

"Wanted orange."

"…It was orange."

"Wasn't."

"It was."

"Wasn't."

"Did you want soda?"

"No."

The little girl growled, scrunching her nose and furrowing a brow in an attempt to express her rage, but in the end looking more cute than angry, eliciting a soft grunt of amusement from Janeway. This served to enrage the wee one further, and the glass left her hand and sailed past woman's ear, smacking into the bulkhead with a tremendous smash.

Janeway stood, staring at the child. The security locker that held the phasers was only a few feet away from the door to her ready room. It would just take one security override code and a pull of the trigger and the little bastard would be gone forever.

"Oh, you are in _so_ much trouble! That's going to earn you a whole week in the brig."

Miral sat, unconcerned. The Captain mentally kicked herself. How was it she could strike fear into the hearts of her crew, make grown men and women wet their pants at the thought of impending punishment, and then have absolutely no effect on a child that barely stood over two feet tall?

"Orange."

Janeway threw up her hands in exasperation. She stepped over to the replicator again and brought up a list of every single liquid item that contained the word. She read them off to the child, her hands curling into painfully tight fists.

"Any of those?"

"Orange."

Janeway's eyes rolled towards the ceiling. _Fuck it._

Figuring she could recycle the little girl's body to make up for the lost rations, she replicated every item on the list, handing them one by one to the child, who promptly smacked each and every cup off the table after taking a hesitant sip.

The rage rippled up Janeway's spine.

"What the fuck do you want?! Orange is a colour, not a fucking drink god dammit!"

Miral blinked.

Her lip quivered.

Her eyes clouded.

"I-Mommmmmy!"

Tears spilled freely over the humps of flesh that comprised the little girl's cheeks and hiccups stole her voice. She slapped the communicator badge pinned to her shirt and contacted her mother, gasping unintelligible words over the line.

"Shit."

It was all Janeway had time to mutter before a very, very angry half-Klingon engineer came bursting through the doors. _'Fuck'_ was all she had time to think before strong fingers wrapped around her throat, closing off her wind pipe and rendering her voice useless.

"What did you do?! What the HELL did you do to my perfect little angel?!"

Janeway clutched at the other woman's fingers and grunted as best as she could.

"Thirsty!"

With a forceful thrust, B'Elanna let the Captain go, and immediately turned to the little girl, wrapping her arms around her and kissing her forehead ridges comfortingly.

"Sure, baby."

The Engineer stood and stepped over to the replicator.

"Tang," she ordered.

A glass of cloudy orange liquid materialized. She handed it to Miral, who happily gulped the liquid in one swift movement.

"TANG?! TANG?! WHAT THE HELL?!" she threw her arms up, "I replicated THIRTY-SIX different drinks for her little ass, and she wanted TANG?!"

"It's her favorite."

Both Miral and B'Elanna glared at the captain, and suddenly she realized exactly why Tom attempted to throw himself out of the airlock on a monthly basis.


End file.
